In academia, a project is born out of a desire or a passion you have towards a certain topic. It is done with the intention of discovering things no one has discovered before to help out humans in some way. In industry, however, the driving force behind research is money. The management of a company comes up with a project idea that will fill a gap they identified in the market and do research on that idea to come up with a product that will make profit. Academic research is funded mostly by grants or contract work given by companies whereas industrial research is conducted by a certain budget that is set aside. People working in academia make a lot less money compared to people who work in industry. I have some previous experience in academic research and I liked it for how flexible it was but I think I’d like to go into industrial research for a career because of the better pay.